The present invention disclosed herein relates to a substrate treating apparatus and method.
Semiconductor devices are manufactured by forming a circuit pattern on a substrate through various processes such as a photolithography process. In recent years, a supercritical drying process for drying a substrate by using a supercritical fluid is being used for manufacturing a semiconductor device having a line width of about 30 nm or less. The supercritical fluid may represent a fluid having both gas and liquid characteristics under a critical temperature and pressure. The supercritical fluid has superior diffusion and penetration properties and high dissolubility. Thus, since the supercritical fluid has little surface tension, the supercritical fluid may be very usefully used for drying a substrate.
To perform the supercritical process, a filtered supercritical fluid is supplied into a process chamber. Here, the filtering performance may be considerably different according to the state of the supercritical fluid. When the supercritical fluid is initially supplied, the supercritical fluid may significantly fall in temperature due to adiabatic expansion thereof. In this case, the supercritical fluid changes into a liquid phase to significantly deteriorate the filtering performance. As a result, the supercritical fluid supplied for the process may have low purity.